


The Real Thing

by BeautifullyLovely



Category: Political RPF
Genre: 2016 US Presidential Election, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-28 20:18:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7655275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautifullyLovely/pseuds/BeautifullyLovely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her feet are killing her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Real Thing

They’re in country-land. Trump territory. Fat flies lick at the podium and brows shine with the collective sweat of midday toil. She twists her ankle back and forth, slow, trying to unstick the skin of her heel from the lining of her shoe. An ear pricked, a curious tilt to the chin, as Tim gives his speech--voice loud and proud and arms held high above the head. She wonders as she listens, in a way she can’t help. Wonders about taking that shoe off, uncurling her toes and letting them soak up sunlight.

Placing herself in the crowd, in the grass, she pictures her worn, leathered foot unfurling in the dank air, the unprofessional crunch of the body. Maybe it would be truthful, the way Sanders’ unkempt, wild-man hair or Trump’s neverending bluster were the real deal. Authentic, that ever present word. Unpolished and therefore more accessible. But then, it had to be said--blemishes were not something people wanted to see on a female figure. Grey hair on a man added character, but on a woman it just looked old.

She stalls the movement of her ankle back and forth. In the crowd, she sees the drag of sunspots down faces and the droop of consistently tired eyes. A man with soft, wooly hunter’s boots. A girl in pigtails, clinging tight to a mother seemingly incapable of mirth. They look up, and up, looking at her and Tim, the podium that promises: ‘Stronger Together’.

They clap, as one and as one of many, as Tim gestures her forward, belly jolly with warmth. She stands, and the throb that spikes from the toe up is but a minor inconvenience. Her heart is too full to give it but an inch.

“Hello.” She says. “Thank you for coming. I am grateful to be here, with you, in this great state.”

She was not born for this. She was never meant for charming, for somehow making the minutiae policy sing. She pushed and pulled as the public and the party and the world pushed and pulled, molding a person ready for this. A constant building. A few failed pieces she had not known were missing until the clock chimed too late.

“Hello,” She says, and folds into her strengths: the dirt and the sweat and the detail work, the kind of thing she can cup close and help thrive. Her life love, alongside Bill and Chelsea and her beautiful grandchildren. Her own North Star around the noise. Truth in spite of it all.

The people gather. They are holding signs of love, of support. They are holding their children's hands, and, with it, their hearts. They are reaching out to her on faith, steel-tinged and rusty but for a glimmer of hope.

“I am here.” She says, swallowing. “I am here because I have plans tailored for progress, growth. Plans that desire to help build upon the America I know. That you know. One that is great, and good. An imperfectly perfect country, always striving with the goal of bettering itself and its citizens.”

She looks into their harsh faces, knows that they’re watching and waiting and sure to hold every slip of word from her lips to the board for tallying. Her heels click together, worn and dry but ready for the fight. Ready, as always.

She thinks, she was not born to be this: a politician, a celebrity, a mother and a wife. She was not born to be anything. She was made, with every gentle touch of her mother, with every scolding of her father, with every praise of a teacher, lesson of a mentor, conversation with a colleague, understanding of a voter, laughter of a husband, a daughter. She was made.

She sees their sunspots, the sadness drawing down their eyes. She sees the practicality of the men’s baseball caps and the impracticality of the women’s pinned hair. The rust, the hope, the hurt, the impossible continuing of belief. She sees.

And, even with the miles separating them, she knows that they were made, too.

\---

lik•a•ble (adjective): pleasant, friendly, and easy to like.

The word is the most slinky thing she has ever come across. Winking in and out, teasing her as that one most necessary ingredient. They know she has the experience, that the facts can only be twisted so far until accomplishments protrude out. They know she can do it. Hardline, impossible to deny.

But then: unlikable, robotic, too polished. Decades chasing that wantable nature, sawing off the edges of armor that got her this far and filing them into curves. Soft. But hard. But soft.

They say: being likable shouldn't be something you have to work at. But for her, it is an impossible task. Sometimes, she’ll get that pinch in her shoe, at the center bridge of the foot. It will pulse and ache and make her want to fling the thing out into the crowd. I am not likable; I will never be that constant perfect balance of hard yet soft. Hard yet soft.

Then, she thinks: so be it.

She is a woman of action, and she has always favored verbs.

\---

Bill wraps one long, intent arm around her shoulder, and she leans.

The sun has set, night air a comforting chill against the sweat blooming in dips of skin. They are mostly alone. The walk does not have the ease of their strolls at home on the trail, unflattering tennis shoes and worn-in jeans, but she still feels a giggle biting up her throat, especially when Bill leans over to whisper, breath fluttering.

She hops a little, the back of her shoe rutting harsh against her heel, but Bill has her, she has him, and the atmosphere is too lovely to miss.

“You killed it.” He says, and his lips rub--ever so slightly--against the skin of her ear. Professional and personal. His own sliding scale. Of course, they are both aware that when it comes to those things, the flash of a little teeth grants him a little more leeway.

I did. I did. She thinks. It sounds silly in her head, the same way Pokemon references and appeals to the young voter make her turn itchy and feel the wrong kind of old. I-- She thinks, over and over, trying to place it. Trying to make it smooth. I, I, I--

“They loved you.” Bill says, voice low, a secret, and that biting giggle turns high, releasing into the sky as a booming laugh.

“Sure.” She says. “Sure.”

\---

The hotel is like all other hotels they’ve stayed in. Neatly extravagant--candy on pillows and wine in the cooler. A bathroom hidden in a far corner nook and a TV hung serviceably to the wall. Bill lets himself fall onto the patterned couch, makes the room imminently more individualistic by the slight sprawl to the legs and elbow to the armrest.

She smiles, watches him tug at the tie hung sharply across his throat as she yanks the offending shoes from her feet. The cloying responsibility quiets. He winks at her without moving a lid--something in the heart beating up into the face, clear enough to her if not to everyone else. She unfurls her foot in the dank air and he watches the way her leg cranes inelegantly out.

She does not mind.

Within this room breathes the memory of other rooms, other nights. When things were reversed. When she was the one shifting at the axis, not the center, the steady orbit that ripped through all the noise. It was easier, then, and harder, then, and in some ways it’s just the same. Her and him and the never-ending flood. They still haven’t perfected the art of walking on water, but the trying hasn’t gotten any less worth her while. Even drenched to the core, she thinks he looks good.

He hums, an old tune from the early days. His voice is rougher, and quieter, but she likes it. Her husband was born to make minutiae policy sing. He is likable, even when he does unlikable things. She knew a week into talking--worlds were going to be shaped under his hands. He had that aura.

He said to her one night, years into their marriage, also a secret: “I should’ve known.” Quieter, rougher, more prone to the weighty pause: “I should’ve known better. I’m going to do my damndest to help make sure they know it.”

She doesn’t hold it against him. Not anymore. She wouldn’t have guessed that that world-shaping, earth-shaking, quaking quality could be hers to weld either. It wasn’t innate, afterall. She had to put up her hands, stretch tendons past the point of stretching, before a finger could glance off the surface of that want.

She tells him she is going to change, shutting the door behind her.

She looks at her face in the mirror, under the yellow light of the hotel bathroom. The problem is this: her lipstick is smudged. It was a long-lasting brand, made to withstand the heat of campaigning. She had checked, twice, and it was not out of order before leaving. Well. Her mind shifts through the possible headlines to amuse herself, because amusement is needed in these types of situations. She wipes at her lips with the complimentary towel. The roughness of the fibers snap against the skin.

How imperfect she is. How capable of misstep, how utterly human. It is not a good look for her. It is a woman people want to see unpowdered and then cringe, slowly passing over a tube of foundation. Robotic or failable, one or the other or both. Both is possible with the right twist.

She prefers robotic. Nails can't get under metal, but they can get under skin.

\---

She is not a goddess. She does not pretend to be.

She puts on a royal blue nightgown with lace at the breasts because it is moderately pretty and moderately comfortable. Even she does not know the secret to having it all.

She reenters the room with age-spots on her thighs and wrinkles at her neck and she does not care. She is beyond caring when with Bill or Chelsea, who do not expect truth and realness and honesty without its inherent flaws.

She is not a goddess, she does not and never said she was. She is still in the process of being recognized as human.

She walks to Bill and he puts a hand on her thigh, thumb brushing the inside. In the spring of 1971, I met a girl-- Whispers soft against her temple, laced with warmth.

Because of who they are, who she is, Bill’s speech was laid out and prodded the second it hit the table. Scavenged for weak spots. The reporters’ first target, arrow striking gracefully in air: Why, pray tell, could her husband not talk of policy? Why must he feminize her?

lik•a•ble (adjective): pleasant, friendly, and easy to--

Some things are not winnable, and this is one of them.

She rocks forward, soft-hard, and his hand slides further up. She arches her foot, slow, and trails the pad of her toe under his trousers and across skin. His hands hover, jaw ticks. Eyes steady on her.

She brings fingertips over the redness of his cheeks, across the wrinkles of his forehead. Delves her hand into hair white as snow, bleached from the ever-present shutter of a camera lense.

She is not a goddess married to a god. She does not want to be, though that would make things smoother. Still-- Him looking up at her, now. Her: wife, woman, politician, mother, daughter, leader, friend. All these thing in his gaze, them shining together, all at once, is something ahead of the pure mundane. 

“Kiss me.” She wants him. She wants them as they are. Thousands of beings in two beings, too complex for the modest mind to comprehend.

Bill looks up, and up. His mouth opens. Hard-soft. Astonished arms tighten at the small of back, cheek pressed into her stomach.

“Honey,” He says. “You never need to ask.”

\---

work (verb): to be engaged in physical or mental activity in order to achieve a purpose or result, especially in one's job; do work.

Call it diligent. Call it boring. Call it what you want. But your masks won't mask the thing that is.


End file.
